These are four more books in the Dalziel/Pascoe series by Hill. After
reading On Beulah Height I just had to find more, it was that good. After
a trip to the two Large Chain Bookstores in my area and a side trip to my
local independent store, I came home with nothing. Zip, zero, nada. It was
exasperating but there is also a mystery bookstore in town; I normally avoid
since a visit there is usually a big hit on the wallet, but I called them and,
joy!, had them set these aside for me.

Will has reviewed them before and given excellent plot summaries so I will
skip that. What struck me reading these so closely together is that
each book had several layers and one of them is always a text–a diary, a story, a manuscript–that either mirrors the plot or is key to the mystery
the detectives are trying to solve. In Arms and the Women, Ellie Pascoe writes a story about Odysseus and Aeneas meeting on the island of Calypso and bases Odysseus on Dalziel and Aeneas on her husband. In The Woods Beyond, Pascoe’s
great-great-grandfather’s WWI war diary provides the subtext. Fascinating.

Another thing that stands out when dashing thru the books one after the
other is the way Hill plays with long words. There were times I literally
had to look things up in the dictionary because he was using adjectives and
nouns I had never seen before. Ever. Dialogues with the Dead has
characters playing a hyped-up version of Scrabble that uses word play and
puns in multiple languages and Hill just goes wild tossing off polysyllabic
mysteries that beg to be checked on.

Plus the mysteries are so well plotted I almost never figured them out ahead of time. And I find Dalziel compelling. He’s a truly gross man, fat,
sweaty, cynical and abrasive, but there is something that makes you unable to
take your eyes away from him and after a bit you find he’s messing around
with your mind.

Now I just have to find more of them. There’s always Amazon, I guess.